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Blogs about The Winning of The Carbon War

Recharge, 3 Mar 2015
The triple whammy giving oil executives sleepless nights
"Picture yourself as a Big Energy chief executive, surveying three megatrends. The first is your soaring cost base and the growing dissatisfaction of your investors about it. The second is the plunging cost base of your clean-energy competition and the increasing bullishness of analysts about that. The third is the worrying direction of climate policymaking. Any one would be bad enough. But all three at once?...
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Virgin Unite, 2 Mar 2015
The winning of the carbon war
"Writer, campaigner and social entrepreneur, Dr Jeremy Leggett is the founding director of Solarcentury - the UK's largest independent solar electric company. Ahead of the Paris Climate Summit in December, Jeremy is releasing a free-download, live series around the winning of the carbon war, with the vital final scene played out on the last night of the summit. Today we share part one...
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Guardian: “Mining companies are campaigning for the G20 leaders’ meeting to support continued use of coal as a solution to the global “energy poverty” crisis, as Australia resists the inclusion of climate change on the formal agenda.”Read more

Guardian: “The UK government plans to allow fracking companies to put “any substance” under people’s homes and property and leave it there, as part of the Infrastructure Bill which will be debated by the House of Lords on Tuesday.”Read more

FT: “The price of oil tumbled nearly three dollars a barrel on Tuesday after the west’s energy watchdog cut its forecast for oil demand growth in a sign of the darkening outlook for the global economy.”Read more

FT: “….Scars from Russia’s gas cuts in 2006 and 2009 run deep across eastern Europe and, at first glance, the continent appears to be in danger again this year thanks to a seemingly unshakeable dependence on Gazprom, Moscow’s gas export monopoly.”Read more

Business Green: “The governor of the Bank of England has reiterated his warning that fossil fuel companies cannot burn all of their reserves if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change, and called for investors to consider the long-term impacts of their decisions.”Read more

Reuters (exclusive): “Suadi Arabia is quietly telling the oil market it would be comfortable with much lower oil prices for an extended period, a sharp shift in policy that may be aimed at slowing the expansion of rival producers including those in the U.S. shale patch.”Read more

EU Press release: “The functioning of energy markets and the size and effect of government interventions has been the subject of debate for years. To date however, a consolidated dataset for government interventions in the power market of the European Union has been missing.”Read more

National Journal: “Exxon Mobil is wielding its public relations might against the fossil-fuel divestment movement, signaling that climate-change activists have struck a nerve at the world’s biggest publicly traded oil and gas company.”Read more

Emerging Markets: “A public call by Bank of England governor Mark Carney that the vast majority of oil reserves should be considered “unburnable” if the world wants to avoid catastrophic climate change makes him stand out among mainstream figures.”Read more

Guardian: “Independent energy supplier Ecotricity is among companies and organisations considering a legal challenge against the European commission decision to give the approval for the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant.”Read more

Economist: “This been a nerve-racking summer for oil companies. Since June the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil—the global benchmark—has slumped from $115 to $92, a decline of 20% and the lowest for more than two years.”Read more

Tyler Durden on Zero Hedge: “One of, if not the biggest contributors to the improving US trade deficit and thus GDP (not to mention labor market in select states) over the past several years, has been the shale revolution taking place on US soil, which has led to unthinkable: the US is now the biggest producer of oil in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia. Which is great today, but what about tomorrow?”Read more

Bob Pisani on CNBC: Why are shale plays getting hit so hard? The short answer is, because oil is dropping. West Texas Intermediate has gone from $105 to $85 in three months. But a large part of the problem has to do with the way shale drilling is financed.”Read more

The Winning of The Carbon War

Humanity is in a race, a kind of civil war. Believers in a safe future fuelled by endless sunlight and related forms of clean energy combat defenders of finite carbon fuels careless of the impact they have on the world by clinging to coal, oil, and gas. Jeremy Leggett fought for the light side for a quarter of a century as it lost battle after battle to the dark side. Then, in 2013, the tide began to turn. By 2015, it was clear the light side could win the war. Leggett’s diary from the front lines tells one person’s story of those turnaround years, and what they can mean for the world.